Network Lantency

I am going to fix up adsl.
The problem is that there is no network lantency guarantee from the ISP. Is there any software that could monitor the lag of the real time data and alert you if the data is too slow or unsync...?

Your data supplier should be able to give you a beacon server to ping (with Realtick it's Beacon.Taltrade.com) and this utility will monitor, graph and record the ping times once per second. My latency hovers around 60ms and if it rises over a couple hundred (the graph changes colors) I know my data is beginning to become stale. I can also look at the graph and know if the problem is with my ISP, the backbone connection or with TAL.

Of course, if TAL is getting bad/slow data from the Naz feed this will not tell you that.

I will eventually run a feed from a GPS into my serial port and program a utility to compare time stamps and show me how stale my data REALLY is.

I agree with you - pingplotter is an excellent utility which I use daily. for anyone not familiar with this program, it is similar to tracert but more user friendly(much more)

But I am curious about you setting the program to ping once per second. It seems to me that pinging that frequently would put undue burden on the remote server. Not to mention your own internet connection and (to some degree) your operating system. When I click to get into or, especially, out of a position I want my buy/sell signal to be the highest priority on my system. I don't want my OS to decide to go ahead and ping one more time before sending my signal to my broker.

FWIW, I use pingplotter to ping approximately every 5 min just to make sure my connection is still up.

joytrader,

here is an additional method you might try: there is a freeware program called Atomic TimeSync available at analogx.com (analogx has several other nice freeware's incl. Netstat Live - both of these progs work fine on my W2K PC)

Anyway, if you get your computer's clock sync-ed, then you can watch the times reported in a "time & sales" window while also watching your computer clock and see how well things match up. Any discrepancy could be attributed either to your data provider or your connection.

By the way, my PC's clock loses a few seconds every day so I have to set it every day or two. I don't know enough about computers to understand why the clocks can't be accurate all the time...???

>But I am curious about you setting the program
>to ping once per second. It seems to me that
>pinging that frequently would put undue burden
>on the remote server. Not to mention your own
>internet connection and (to some degree) your
>operating system.

If you bring up your system monitor and watch your resource utilization while pinging you will see that it uses next to zero (computer smart...task easy). If you consider the bandwidth required to simply update a LVL2 real time and compare that with the tiny bits of data required to ping it doesn't mean a thing.

Pinging every 5 minutes (or even every 30 seconds for that matter) will not tell me if the liquidity I'm trying to hit is actually there at the moment I need it. In a scalping situation I need to KNOW at the time of entry that the data isn't stale.

"My latency hovers around 60ms and if it rises over a couple hundred (the graph changes colors) I know my data is beginning to become stale."

Bear in mind that a couple hundred ms equals 1/5 of one second. If your decision making abilites, not to mention your hand-eye coordination, are so finely tuned that data 1/5 of a second old is considered "stale" by your standards, then you are a far, far better man than I !!!

Another factor to consider is that every other trader looking at whatever LII you are watching is dealing with a small latency as well. Even on the best connected trading station there will be some latency.

You refer to 'resource utilization' and 'system monitor', these terms remind me of W98 - I used to trade on a W98 machine and I always had the "System Monitor" running so I could closely monitor my resources- you have to on a W98 system. But the W98 System Monitor monitors neither memory (RAM) usage nor CPU usage(if I understand correctly). Pingplotter does indeed tax these resources.

On the other hand, on a W2K or NT system, I would agree with you that pingplotter would probably not be a significant drain.

Regarding the internet connection, I'll admit I am not an expert, but if 1/5 of a second truly does matter, then I would think that if your buy/sell order is entered a split second after the OS initiates a ping, then your order will be delivered later than it would in the absence of the ping being sent out over your line. And if you are pinging every second the odds are increased that a conflict could occur between the timing of the ping and your order entry, possible slowing you order very, very slightly...but if milliseconds matter, it may be that milliseconds are sacrificed on order entry in the effort to verify absolutely 'fresh' data.

by the way, I am not a scalper so maybe that explains why my standards seem to be more relaxed than yours

I would not use PingPlotter to monitor the data feed quality, neither Atom Time or similar program.

In a real world practice of years, even with other traders, I discovered that 60ms is GREAT in order to have good fills etc. Lot of traders in the range 250-300ms can trade very well, without hassles, even if they are located not in the USA. Times of 1000ms and plus are VERY dangerous, instead, and as well an high data loss (packets), you should have none or change ISP on the fly that day, at least.

I use Atom Time not every day, usually all is OK; Pimg plotter quite every day, or if I supsect troubles, but the better toool, the one already saved me a lot of bucks is DUMeter http://www.hageltech.com. It shows a tiny windows where you see graphically in realtime your bandwith usage.

As soon as it drops to zero (no more red bars), you immediately recognize there is a big trouble, usually a bunch of seconds in advance of your programs recognizing something bad is happening. Usually better thing is trying to reconnect immediately through another ISP, or, depending the trade unvinronment, calling the broker to close positions.